It’s cool, too, because on the wall to her right hangs her son on his execution-by-torture device. Idn that pretty? They’re together again, or at least little statue-type deals that are supposed to represent them are together.

(Have you ever noticed that it’s oddly hard not to see dolls and stuffed animals and the like as just a little bit sentient? Because I have. I guess that’s just because the recognition of what is sentient is so deeply rooted and automatic that it’s hard to over-ride it even though you know the fuzzy puppy doll is no more sentient than a brick.)

(This is Kahneman’s System 1 and System 2. There are some System 1 things you can’t not do – one nice example he gives is “think of Paris when you hear the capital of France.”)

(This could explain a lot about the fuss over abortion.)

Veronica points out

It will take more than a miracle for the Catholic Church to placate the thousands of parishioners who are outraged by church closures and who are disgusted with the behaviour of the clergy in the diocese.

The Church announced that there were plans to close churches in the Diocese. Perhaps, they should open up a Marian shrine in the bedroom of Denise Simon to compensate for the closures and the scandals of the clergy.

To think that there was a time when I would have actually believed in this sort of thing. What was I thinking at all? I remember several times attending all-night vigils -having travelled for hours on to arrive at destination – to see a ‘moving’ statue of the Virgin Mary. I was utterly convinced it was for real. Lack of sleep obviously lent to the mind playing tricks.

It’s very hard to convince those who are deeply religious, and those who desperately want healing and tangible proof, due to lifelong adoration of the Blessed Virgin Mary, that it is all in their imagination. They’ll cling on to any religious ‘blob’, such as the apparition on the bedroom wall, in hopes that their lives might be changed for the better after repeated recital of the rosary and litanies in honour of the Virgin Mary. She’s the next best thing to God. Note how coincidentally this happened when the hierarchy announced church closures in the diocese.